© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022

What was your everyday life like before you identified as an artist or a photographer? Did your initial environment influence your perspective? Was there a distinct catalyst or experience that pushed you towards an artistic path?

Vanessa Cowling (VC): I grew up on a small farm, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, before moving to the Western Cape as a teenager. I spent much of my childhood outside, in nature. There was space and safety to disappear. I spent many days lying in the tall grass, with my cat, reading. I was often also making and drawing. My mother was then, as she is now, the gardener in our family. She has “green fingers”. In her care, anything grows. For as long as I can remember, my mother has found joy in caring for plants. When we moved from the Eastern Cape to Cape Town, my mother needed an entire removal truck just for her potted plants, a non-negotiable condition for our relocation despite the cost. We moved many times in Cape Town, but my mother always made our rental accommodations feel like home with her plants. As a child I was often extremely embarrassed as my mother took a slip or cutting on our neighbourhood walks. She would even stop her car at the side of the road to carefully take a slip from a plant or an unsuspecting stranger’s property, often a species absent from her garden. Of course, she would happily return the favour, giving plant cuttings to friends, neighbours and strangers. I did not realise it then, but my mother is a plant activist and, in her care and in her communal gathering and sharing of plants, she is an environmental and political activist, too. Perhaps the seeds of my sense of responsibility for the environment were sowed many years ago, by my mother. She nurtured in me a need to care for and propagate the plants around me. This observation and care has culminated in my most recent body of work, Fixing the Shadows, a photographic exploration of beginnings and endings.

© Vanessa Cowling, Untitled (Garden)(detail). Organic chemigram print. 2022

Tell us something about your educational path and if it has informed your journey at all? Anyone has been instrumental in guiding your visual consciousness and practical evolution?

VC: It was traumatic to move to a different city and start a new school, but I gained a brilliant new art teacher, and honestly, she helped propel me into becoming the artist I am today. After school, I started a science degree at UCT, with subjects like mathematics, chemistry and biology. During my summer vacation, I went to work in New York and whilst away, my mother applied to art school for me, stating that I was miserable studying science and it would be better to follow my heart, and move across to art. It is because of her, that I had the confidence to change degrees. In hindsight, the brief foray into the sciences was an invaluable addition to my future practice, which interweaves science and art. I returned to New York to work, funding my university education and it was there that my love for photography was cemented, seeing the work of Sally Mann, Julia Margaret Cameron and so many others. It was also there that I was able to purchase my first medium format camera and attend a short course at ICP. I have been making, exhibiting and teaching since then. It was only in 2021, after three children that I decided to become a student again and do my MFA. I was encouraged to do this by my friend and mentor, Associate Professor of Photography at UCT, Svea Josephy. She pushed me, giving me the confidence to realise my potential. I am infinitely grateful to her. Honoury Professor Penny Siopis also played a pivotal role, introducing me to key concepts around materialism and as a painter and conceptual artist steered me into thinking more critically about photography and questioning concepts and ideas around photography that I took for granted. It was invaluable to have the perspective of an artist and academic who is not a photographer. It is thanks to these two brilliant artist/supervisors that I was able to grow academically and personally.

What are the themes that interest you, what generally attracts your observation?

VC: My practice interweaves mortality, grief, death and new life with an environmental consciousness. Initially a personal, embodied experience initiated by my father’s death, the work broadened to environmental concerns that speak about the cyclical nature of life and death, but also of the accelerated death I observe in the environment. My practise is also a reflection on photography itself – its destructive environmental history and its inextricable relationship with memory and death.

© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022

What is your approach to the medium? Do you privilege any camera or process in particular? How do you envision or conceptualize the projects?

VC: I love photography. I find the medium incredibly rich, both materially and conceptually. My practice is malleable, and I like to think and conceptualise through experimenting, process and play, allowing the body of work to grow. I do not privilege one camera over the next, but am rather driven by the idea first, the equipment for me is secondary. Currently I am working with slow, haptic, cameraless processes, specifically making lumen prints, anthotypes, phytograms and cameraless ambrotypes with a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability.

The works that I am making, regardless of their apparent subject, are all made with plants. I work with plants as subjects, sometimes just as they were, sometimes in the processing and material of the photograph and sometimes to create a universe, stars and the cosmos. The plants are harvested sustainably from the Sustainable Photographic Garden at UCT and sometimes from my home. I mostly collect fallen leaves and plants but also make works with plants or flowers that were gifted to me, waiting for them to fade past their freshest point before working with them. The residue plant material then goes into a photographic compost, to be worked with differently and will eventually return to the garden to be reabsorbed. My current body of work therefore considers materials and materiality on several levels, particularly in relationship to how they begin, how they interact and what they become. I do this to be respectful to the environment because environmental consciousness is crucial to my practice. Besides the plants themselves, I work with expired, redundant and obsolete photographic paper and photographic and X-ray film. It is decision, not a technological limitation. Material redundancy leads to experimentation and enables me to use “waste” materials.

© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022

Have you undertaken projects or tasks that required you to venture into unfamiliar territories, physically or emotionally? If so, how do you cope with the uncertainties and daunting photo ventures? What have been some defining challenges or milestones on your artistic path?

VC: Going back to study as a “mature student” was wonderfully challenging for me. It afforded me the time and space to concentrate on my practice fully. The biggest challenge was to balance family and financial life and to make time for everything. I thought studying amongst colleagues at UCT that I have worked with for many years would be challenging, but they were kind, critical and engaging. Writing again after a very long break was also very challenging and an aspect I needed to really work on.

Does research play any significant role in your practice? Do you dialogue with other experts when developing your projects?

VC: Research is a vital component to my practice. Although I work quite intuitively, my practise is grounded conceptually with ongoing research and dialogues with peers and mentors. I also work closely with industry experts, technically, to help achieve my conceptual goals.

How far people, communities are included in your project? Or in what ways do you hope to give back or contribute to the broader artistic community or world at large with your work?

VC: The Sustainable Photographic Garden, began as an idea. An idea to green a small neglected piece of earth, behind the photography building at UCT and to work with it as a teaching resource. The intention was to instil a sense of hope and agency for my students. Phase 1 was planted in 2021, and this year we will plant Phase 4. The space has been transformed. What began as a guerrilla garden (no permission was sought) has turned into a beautiful green space, visited by students, insects and birds and celebrated and acknowledged by the academic institution. There is an active WhatsApp group which shares information about what is happening in the garden and what is needed. The group comprises staff members, past and present students, cleaning and security staff. The garden is a bridge that connects many people on our campus who would ordinarily be isolated. This community continues to grow. Importantly the garden also grows. It is an active participant in our community and within my practice.
This project is in many ways only the groundwork, as there is much still to do in this arena. In the short term my aim is to work with other photographic organisations, for example the University of Stellenbosch, the University of the Witwatersrand and the Market Photo workshop to set up sustainable darkroom gardens and to teach others about sustainable darkroom practices. I have started to produce a series of field guides with sustainable photographic plant chemistry recipes which will be freely shared. I will continue to experiment, making, playing, learning and teaching and sharing in this area.

© Sustainable Photographic Garden UCT

© Sustainable Photographic Garden UCT

Tell us about the project “Fixing the Shadows” ? What is the motivation and the theme you addressed?

VC: Fixing the Shadows is a photographic project that focuses on processes of cameraless photography and seeks out new ways to work with darkroom-based photography that I regard as less environmentally and personally destructive. I explore how methods of fixing an image trace can technically represent a form of mending, which I associate with the practice of care. The project is reliant on the reciprocal relationship between me and plants, acknowledging plant agency. Fixing the Shadows is also a personal project that began with the death of my father, and in this sense seeks to mend a personal grief. Together with students, family, friends and colleagues, I have planted and grown a sustainable photographic garden. It is a gesture of reciprocal practice to heal a small piece of ground, which is indicative of a larger world in environmental crisis. The exhibition is comprised of the garden, lumen prints, anthotypes, phytograms and a light installation presented in immersive form. The presence of plant life is traced through chemical processes of cameraless photography and the unusual colour emanations that result from its shadows. It is hoped that this immersive, dynamic exhibition will for a moment dispel fear and grief, bringing the viewer out of the shadows and into the light.

© Vanessa Cowling, Untitled. 2022, Lightbox, Phytogram on 4”x 5” sheet film 

I first started photographing flowers and plants when my father died in 2007 Our home, like many others after the funeral, was filled with flowers sent as a gesture of sympathy. I took the flowers to my studio and photographed them as they wilted and died. Looking back, I wanted to distract myself from overwhelming grief, and I realise now that it was also a cathartic process and a meditation on the natural cycles of life and death. It seemed appropriate later to work with plants in a project centred around beginnings and endings and light (and its absence).

Fixing the Shadows hints at a desire to mend, to fix the dark and fearful aspects of my own world. In a sense, my work in this MFA is a continuation of my interests described in the images I made of flowers after my father’s death. However, in making these MFA images I did not want to “take” pictures but to manifest a more reciprocal relationship with plants, one in which my and plant agency were mutually acknowledged. We are taught to “take” a picture, to “capture” a moment. I hope to ameliorate the one-sided selfishness, even violence, of these words and of the history of photography with the nurture and care of the sustainable photographic garden. I wanted to give something back – to make, not take, in the same way that my photographs are made, not taken. Planting the garden made me feel more connected to the planet and enabled me to share through teaching and community. The garden and gardening also brought me closer to my mother the gardener, and to friends, students and colleagues through our shared labour, appreciation and care, even as I acknowledged the privilege of that access to land.

© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022 

What are the practical difficulties you faced in its development? Tell us a bit about the behind the scenes of this project?

VC: As a mother of three children, time was my greatest challenge, and finding a way to balance family life, with work and financial responsibilities whilst studying. Finding the materials was easy enough, with fellow artists and institutions donating old redundant materials to me. This may be a challenge in the future as there is a limited supply, however I am excited to extend and to grow the project if and when I face this challenge. I did face some challenges initially with Phase 1 of the garden. We planted non-indigenous plants initially, based on Global North research. Plants grew well in Winter but after only one week away in mid-summer, the hot African sun and a howling south easter wind resulted in most of the plants dying. This setback however led to new key research into indigenous flora. It also steered the research to consider context and the specific ground with which we were working. The failure was in essence a huge gift and learning opportunity.

© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022

What relevant takeaways have you achieved from this project both with respect to the topic and your authorial practice?

VC: I feel that this project and my research is the groundwork. The beginning of something and I am incredibly excited and inspired to continue with this work. I feel that photography as a practice, including my work, could benefit from acknowledging its environmentally damaging past, gently confronting it and trying to shift into a more environmentally conscious practice. Personally, I feel more confident in my ability and knowledge to tie key elements and ideas together, and to structure my thoughts more coherently. I’ve learnt failure is a brilliant learning opportunity. I’ve enjoyed and grown with my peers, mentors and supervisors, learning from them whilst sharing.

The project itself relates more in general to environmental challenges and climate changes. Could you talk about the "SustainablePhotoGarden" initiative?

VC: The Sustainable Photographic Garden at UCT is centred around the development of environmentally friendly, sustainable and conscious photographic practices and is intended to foster a reciprocal relationship between human and plant participants. Photographic practices (particularly traditional darkroom practices) are historically and generally environmentally destructive. Our photographic garden is used to seek out ways to be less environmentally damaging using plant materials and everyday kitchen chemistry that is non-toxic and not harmful. It is also, very importantly, a communal teaching space that aims to move beyond the material, investigating context and site, and to develop and nurture both human and plant relationships. It is a place for planting seeds.

© Sustainable Photographic Garden UCT

You have exhibited this work. Which criteria drive your choices? How would you ideally showcase it?

VC: The work has only been exhibited for my Masters exam and was only open to the public for 2 days. I would like to share it with a broader audience. My MFA exhibition was curated with consideration of the space it occupies and how the various bodies of work connect. The Michaelis Gallery at UCT was chosen as the venue because of its proximity to the Sustainable Photographic Garden, the tendrils and roots of the garden conceivably extending through the soil towards the gallery space. The garden is physically lower than the gallery, in a sense grounding the work. 

In addition to the site, the body of work consists of numerous discrete but interconnected works. Several 4x5 Lightboxes; Untitled (Garden): an installation of lumen prints, phytograms and anthotypes covering the gallery wall, immersive in scale; large and small-scale lumen and phytogram prints; a light installation of phytograms on negative film, X-ray film and graphic arts film and collodion positives on glass. The installation also incorporates old light projectors, an old slide projector and various-sized light boxes; a small 8.5 x6.5 collodion positive lightbox. 

© Vanessa Cowling, Interactive light installation view Twilight Room. Various film photograms, lights. South Africa 2022. 

It is not essential that all works listed above form part of a new installation. When considering new sites to exhibit the work, I imagine the older works connecting and integrating into new spaces with new works made on location, taking into consideration the outside foliage, natural world including the sky above of the new site. 

Fixing the shadows is about time and space in relation to photography. If I consider Untitled (Garden) specifically, the human body as it experiences the gallery space is the site of an interchange of the past, present and future. Untitled (Garden) references the past in the origins of analogue and alternative photographic processes (ambrotype and lumen prints), while the viewer experiences the work in the present, and the future is evoked in how the work will change in another space. In Untitled (Garden), singular prints collectively make up the larger artwork, a work that is not static but changes and grows with time and the space it occupies. It is organic and will continue to grow and change, responding to its context. The artwork is in a sense conceptualised as living. I also acknowledge the materials as lively and hope to visually translate this idea of vibrancy embedded within the photograph in the greater work. The installation is not inert but is vital, dynamic, growing and changing. At the time of my MFA exhibition, Untitled (Garden) was two years in the making. This work (and the others), are not sequences depicting linear time from when they were first made to the present. Instead, rooted images (plants with their roots intact or images resembling roots) from different seasons and times are nearer to the ground with plant bodies, leaves and flowers in the middle. Some plants are recognisable as they float singularly within the page, but others exceed the frame. The images become more abstracted and more cosmological in appearance as they approach the top of the gallery wall. Sometimes, a singular image forming part of Untitled (garden) encompasses all three, roots, plant body and cosmological dust.
Importantly, the works are unframed, emphasising their haptic quality. The barrier between work and viewer is minimised.

© Photographic installation view Untitled (Garden), South Africa 2022

And in general how do you cope with advice, criticism, setbacks from the audience or experts?

VC: I am open to discussions and appreciate feedback and connecting with peers and experts. I find these engagements inspiring. Connecting and sharing on every level is a key component of my practice.

The scenario in which photography is presented and discussed has changed considerably in recent years with the spread of ICT and the digital world. How do you relate to social networks and this expanded field of photography? How do you see the future of the medium evolving? And communication of one's own work...

VC: As mentioned previously, connection is a key conceptual component of my work. Digital platforms allow for easy intercontinental discussions and sharing. Materially too, all aspects of photography are interesting to me, including digital cameras and screens. It is a part of photographic history and cannot be denied. I am interested in how we work with this technology old, and new in a way now which is deliberate and considerate.

In my practice as a professional photographer I embrace the digital and use it in my artistic practice where appropriate. Although materiality in a digital age can seem to some critics as non-physical, or non-material rather, screens offer new reflections on how we may consider and understand materiality within the time of digital. A screen is still a material object and the shiny, smooth, touch screen technology encourages a in some ways a haptic gaze as we look and then swipe.

So, photography has a rich and complex relationship with materiality, which is ongoing. What makes it important and useful for me today is how and why I use the materials I do to convey and share ideas within my context. I do however feel that the medium and my practice must continue to evolve. I think it is vital for the survival of our planet to move all art practice, including photography towards a more sustainable goal.

In this fast changing environment have there been periods where you felt the need to redefine or pivot your artistic direction? Or to find your grounding again? How do you handle evolution in your life/work and transformation of visual-identity?

VC: I am lucky to have experience and to have evolved my practise over many years. I definitely see the threads that connect the different bodies of my work, particularly around the continued theme of mending or fixing. My work has definitely shifted into a more environmentally conscious practice however, where I acknowledge not only my personal grief and need to fix, but also my responsibility as a teacher and carer to share and attempt to work beyond myself.

My practice is fully integrated into my life, so my lived experience informs not only my identity but the work that results also. The work I’ve made as a mother is different to the work I made before. Losing a parent has informed my practice too. As a teacher, I have also been lucky to experience a multitude of identity shifts within my students. I hope that it has taught me to be more gentle, to listen and share without imposing a rigid view.

© Vanessa Cowling, Untitled 2022, Lumen Print on vintage paper (2,2x1 m).  

Currently, Fixing The Shadows, working consciously with my materials and with plants and the earth has been incredibly grounding for me. It has also made me feel connected to something more than just myself. I am now considering my connection to the stars, the cosmos, and I feel myself being drawn up. A kind of ungrounding. My younger self, would have fought this, but I find myself vacillating between realms now. I feel a compressing of space and time as I start considering the here and now, and the there and then. I am trying to understand the big picture, the macro, through my comparatively micro practice.

And do you have any projects in the pipeline? Or topics/urgencies you would like to address?

VC: I am fortunate to be the recipient of the Blurring the Lines award as well as the Tierney Fellowship for 2024. This facilities conversations and crits with South African photographic and industry specialists as well as those in Europe. My intention during this time is to create a series of field guides and to run workshops, to share sustainable photographic recipes and alternatives to harmful chemistry. I am also hoping to grow my work and to install it in new locations and to make it public. I am also going on an artist’s residency in the Tankwa Karoo in April, where I hope to work with local indigenous plants, and to turn my gaze and thoughts skyward, considering the sun, the moon, the stars and the role of light itself on plants, photography and all life on earth.

Any interesting books that you recommend and that recently inspired you and why?

VC: I have read so many books and academic texts in the recent past as research for my MFA. Key reads have included, Giovanni Aloi’s Why Look At Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art. (2019). Aloi gives an invaluable overview of plants and concepts in contemporary art. I also found his concept of “plant blindness” interesting.
Martin Barnes, Shadow Catchers: camera-less photography (2012) and Geoffrey Batchen’s Emanations: the art of the cameraless photograph (2016) are brilliant resources tracing the history of cameraless photography and giving examples of contemporary artists working in this way.
A Handful of Dust. From the Cosmic to the Domestic (2017) by David Campany has also been an integral text supporting my research and practical project. It tracks the inception and movement of the work, known as Dust Breeding, attributed to both Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The photograph was taken in 1920, when Man Ray was visiting the studio of Duchamp. Duchamp had left a large piece of glass on the studio floor, to intentionally collect dust and mark the passing of time. Man Ray suggested he photograph it and so begins this text, following the importance and subsequent showing of this work in various exhibitions and publications from the early 1920s to today. The title of Campany’s book, alludes to the complexity of this work and its importance and reliance on trace and touch as well as a correlation with my work as I look for connections between Earth and the night sky. It looks at notions of extreme proximity and extreme distance. It is also in this book that ideas around touch, trace the organic world and the difference in surfaces compared to using a camera were bought to my attention.
Exact imagination: 300 years of botanically inspired art in South Africa by Coetzee, C., Murink, T. & Klee, A. (2014) gave invaluable local context.
During the first lockdown in 2020, I like many artists moved their practise into the domestic space. As a photographic artist, this led to many home experiments using various kitchen chemistry and a scale of work that was conducive to the domestic space. I began investigating the Darkroom Cookbook (2016) which contains many recipes for photographic processes that one can make with household materials. This is (Still) not a Solution (2020), edited by Hannah Fletcher and supported by The Sustainable Darkroom project, proved also to be very useful. The book contains a rich collection of recipes with examples of how artists have been conceptually integrating this way of working with their concepts. In line with international trends, being shared on extensively on social media, I am also experimenting with environmentally sustainable photographic methods.
I have read many popular scientific books to gain insight into concepts like The Big Bang and the origins of our universe. I also wanted a scientific take on space and time. I read Brian Green book, Until the end of Time (2020), and Carlo Rovelli’s Reality is not what it Seems (2016) and The Order of Time (2019). I especially enjoyed the writing of Carlo Rovelli. The tone, and exploration of ideas is conveyed in a poetic way. Complex ideas are made more accessible and easy to understand in this poetic way. The importance of imagination is also highlighted. From all three scientific texts I was inspired to use my imagination and to think about how I could translate some of these ideas into artworks.
I loved Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still (2015). It showed me how her embodied experience informed her practice.
Another inspiring and key text was Robin Wall Kimmerer’s, Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. (2013). The text made me think more deeply about my responsibility and connection to earth. It also showed me the possibility of combining science, art and personal narrative.

How would you advise students embarking on their artistic journeys based on your experiences?

VC: Do the work. Immerse yourself. Don’t be afraid to play and make mistakes. Have fun. Read and engage. Listen critically to your supervisors. Be open to change.

© Vanessa Cowling, detail from Untitled (Garden) 2022

Which photographer would you like to read an interview about in Urbanautica Journal? Why?

VC: I am a huge fan of Sally Mann, so I would always like to hear more from her.
I would like to read more from artists in the Global South. There is such richness here that would benefit from the connection with the North and vs versa. Artists like Svea Josephy, Jean Brundrit, Nicole Fraser, Ashley Walters, Nobukho Ngaba, Jean Claude Nsabimana, Sitaara Stodel, to name a few.

Vanessa Cowling (Instagram)